Local Woodworker Hitting All The Right Notes With Handmade Guitars

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Guitar maker Greg Savage plays one of his own creations in the woodland studio behind his home in Valencia.

He’s been making custom guitars ever since, well, just a couple years ago.

The guitar craftsman was an Emmy winning videographer for KDKA News for the better part of three decades. Seven years ago, he switched gears, and became an artist in wood.

He recently switched from sculptures and furniture, to guitars that are one of a kind. He’s not into mass production.

“It no longer has the aesthetics of being hand made, because there’s nothing special about it,” he says. “There’s thousands of them.”

That one hour commute to town, each way, has been cut to one minute, unless his golden retrievers slow him down.

“They listen real well but they don’t do squat for holding up their end of the conversation,” he says.

But he needs no help with guitars. His blueprints measure fret plates down to a thousandth of an inch.

He says it helps that he’s played since he was 6-years-old.

“I’ve always had guitars in my blood. And it was always something that was in the back of your mind, either collecting guitars, or listening to the music, or who’s the hot new guitar player now? But then, it just connected one day: I’m doing all this precision woodwork with furniture, why not build a guitar?”

With Gibson and Les Paul guitars fetching big bucks, will someone some day brag about owning a 2014 Savage?